Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Here it is by age group -- net worth excluding primary residence. Note the data is from 2001, so the top 1% or 5% will have gained while everybody else will be about the same (see Krugman discussion of growing wealth and income inequality here). The latest surveys suggest about 8 million US families (out of 110 million) have more than $1 million in liquid net worth. See here for more data from an IRS study.

Gordon Gekko, from the movie Wall Street: "The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own."

Here it is by age group -- net worth excluding primary residence. Note the data is from 2001, so the top 1% or 5% will have gained while everybody else will be about the same (see Krugman discussion of growing wealth and income inequality here). The latest surveys suggest about 8 million US families (out of 110 million) have more than $1 million in liquid net worth. See here for more data from an IRS study.

Gordon Gekko, from the movie Wall Street: "The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own."